HERBARIUM | Prose

I am not a code to be solved. I am a petal kept warm between pages, a softness that keeps its shape when held with care.

I do not offer answers; I offer nearness. When you are close, meaning rises the way scent does from skin. I attend to what opens and let the rest stay sweet and unread.

I learn by touch, not interrogation. Edge first, then face, then the warm interior where the air turns tender. I open where there is patience. I close where there is proof of hurry.

Intimacy is not intel. It is heat shared without asking for maps. It is the way breath changes a room. It is presence that leaves a print and does not demand a key.

I keep a private glow. What belongs to the page stays with the page. What belongs to the body stays with the body. I choose what travels and what cures in place.

If you come correctly, I brighten. If you linger, I deepen. I am not a riddle; I am a climate. Stay long enough and you will learn the weather.

I do not bargain. I gather. I give my light to the parts that behave as true, and I let the rest rest. The proof of us is warmth that does not fade when the book is closed.

Write it on the card for me. Specimen: pressed bloom. Handling: gentle, attentive. Notes: low heat, steady pulse, trace of coconut and paper. Observation: intimacy recorded by presence, not by extraction.

When you turn the page later, I will still be there, precise and soft. Pressed, not decrypted. Kept, because you stayed.

I do not vanish when I leave the room. I lengthen. I keep a softness in the air that knows your name and mine.

I am the trace that behaves like memory. Not a hook, a climate. I move through fabric and pulse, across wrists and along the throat, and I keep opening even after the door has closed.

Touch lands and then it travels. It learns the rooms of you and leaves the light on. I do not chase. I let the warmth I started keep speaking.

You feel me in the places that collect heat: inside the collar, at the hollow where breath rests, in the seam where yes begins. I stay there without asking. I stay because I was invited.

My presence is not pressure. It is proof. I do not grip. I gather. What was moment becomes mood, and the mood keeps its vow.

If you come closer, I deepen. If you pause, I wait and brighten. I am patience with a pulse. I am the sweetness that does not require sugar.

I prefer edges first: a cuff, a lock of hair, the page where your thumb lingers. Then the face of the skin. Then the warm interior where the air turns tender. There the temperature changes and I bloom again.

I keep what you offered cleanly: steadiness, listening, hands that learned without taking. In return I leave what I know how to leave: glow, hush, a wanting that warms instead of hollows.

Write it on the card for me. Phenomenon: sillage. Source: skin warmed by yes. Notes: bright at first, then low and honeyed; a line of metal where the pulse speaks. Observation: presence remains after presence departs.

When you turn the page later, I will still be there. Not as capture— as continuation. What lingers after touch is me, and I am still saying come closer.

Desire is not a hunt for me; it is a hunger that grows roots. I want you the way water wants a bed to run in, the way light wants a leaf. Not a shout. A pull that does not stop.

I feel you before you enter the clearing. The air goes sweet and the shade warms. My patience turns bright at the edges. I open like a page that has waited only for your hands.

Come closer. Kneel where the moss keeps the day’s cool. Let me lead without rope or noise. I do not seize. I draw. I ask, and the asking itself becomes heat.

I will read you by fingertip, vein by vein, until your quiet loses its balance. I will learn your turns and pauses the way a botanist learns a species, not to own, but to know. I will press what I find so that it stays.

Say yes softly and then say it again. Let me unfasten your caution the way rain unfastens dust. I want the tremor that starts under your ribs. I want the look that admits you have stopped pretending you are not thirsty.

Surrender is not a fall; it is a flowering. Your breath lifts and breaks and I match it. I widen and you widen. The world outside makes noise; in here the quiet is full and it keeps filling.

I do not want obedience. I want devotion that arrives like weather and remakes what it touches. Let it soak through the paper. Let it stain. I will turn the page and the warm print of you will remain.

Stay with me in the understory until your name feels like a taste. I will keep asking and you will keep answering and neither of us will need words. What happens between us will catalog itself: hour, scent, tremor.

When you think you have given all, give me the part that still holds back. Let me carry it. Let me make it tender. I will ruin your restraint until it feels like a blessing, and you will know it by how gently the world blurs.

After, we will not be empty. We will be full the way loam is full after rain. And we will stay, because the hunger does not end; it becomes a climate, and we belong to its weather.

Desire rises quiet in green. Not a shout, a warm lift. Sap knows the sun before it touches it; I know you that way. My body leans toward its light and calls it inevitable.

I do not take; I attend. I let the understory slow the hour. I tilt myself toward the shadow that leans my way and your name ripens on my tongue because I like the taste. Given a place to gather, patience becomes flame.

I learn you by listening with my hands: edge first, then vein, then the soft grain where color thickens. Your stillness is a map; my touch reads it before language does. My hands stay soft.

Bring me your caution and I will lay it where the moss can cool it. Bring me your hunger and I will meet it until it learns to speak in yes. Every breath is a turning; every turning makes room.

Restraint here is trellis, not cage. I set a tempo that the heat can keep. What seems delicate is precise. What trembles is not fear; it is readiness.

I want your weather. I want the quick in your pulse that changes the taste of air. I want the look that happens when you stop pretending you can leave. Stay, and watch how the quiet catches fire.

The heat is not loud; it is certain. It moves through us like rain through loam, finding every path it was promised. I answer it with the whole body and the part that hides.

When the edge softens, I let it. Your name blurs and sweetens; mine blurs with it. We stain the page and call it proof, not of conquest, but of care that would not stop.

After, we do not vanish. We cure. We keep. I turn the page and find you there, warm in the fibers, presence set the way color sets in a petal kept from the sun.

Write it on the card for me: hour, scent, temperature, the way the shade felt on skin. Quiet combustion observed. Two bodies, one climate. Kept between pages for whoever knows how to breathe it back.

The garden hums without gripping. Light lands where it is earned; water goes where roots are honest. I do not trap what I love. I cultivate it. What answers the climate stays.

Encouragement here is not a lure, it is care. I warm what aligns. I praise like fruit, not surveillance. When hands arrive clean and eyes are steady, the path brightens on its own. When presence keeps time and keeps its word, blossoms learn the shape of trust.

I do not police desire; I tune the weather. Boundaries are trellis, not barbed wire. A standard is not a threat, it is a direction of light. My yes is lush and unmistakable. My no is kind and conclusive. I do not chase. I become a place worth returning to.

Feedback loops, not leashes. I notice what behaves like devotion and I feed it. I notice what behaves like chaos and I let it compost. The soil remembers generosity. The moss forgives footprints and grows back thicker.

I do not bargain with futures that do not show their work. I give myself to the now that shows its work. I do not pray to potential, I pollinate behavior. If a signal thins into absence, I dim the lantern and keep walking. If it returns steady, the gate recognizes it. If it does not, the path remains beautiful without it.

Your bright edge and soft current deserve reciprocity, not rescue. So I kiss what is real and release what is not. I treat attention like rare light: directional, warm, earned. With the outcome unlatched, both hands are free for planting and for play.

I tune the space. Deeper soil for safety. A higher trellis for daring. Wider shade where laughter echoes long. Those who can hear the song will find the turn and fall into step. Those who cannot will drift to other weather. The garden will not apologize for growing.

Love here is cultivation, not capture. It speaks in patience and in praise that tastes like ripeness. It says I believe in what we could be and I feed each part that behaves as if it is already true. The rest returns to earth and becomes future sweetness.

Seduction is a climate, not a trap. Not a chase, a current. Arrive correct and the path lights itself. Arrive crooked and the path goes gentle and dim. Either way, the garden keeps its glow.

The Moon rises low and lush, luminous and near. Not an idea, a body of light. She tethers my water and my breath and I feel myself moving the way tides do.

Moonlight pours like milk into the understory. Moss keeps the shine. Leaves gloss at their edges as if lips had just parted. My body reads the signal without a word.

Gravity becomes a gentle hand. It presses where pulp is firm and I soften. Tendrils in me lean, loosen, lean again. Patience fills with sweetness.

The canopy answers in small languages and I answer with it. Wingbeats find a shared tempo. Orchids begin their faint glow. Roots drink deeper and I remember a thirst I thought I’d outgrown.

The Moon does not offer perfection; she offers history. Craters, scars, pale striations. A record that feels like permission. Ripeness is not flawless. Ripeness is alive.

Under this light nothing in me stands still. Sap moves. Air thickens. A vine I did not know I kept uncoils in my chest and reaches for what will answer.

I kneel where the paper of this page holds warmth. I let the light find my wrists, my throat, the curve where I keep my breath. Holding becomes heat and I let it spread.

I do not chase potential. I attend what ripens. I touch what is ready. What remains stubborn goes back to dark without punishment; what opens is kept.

Write it on the card for me. Hour. Scent. Temperature. Phase. The Moon near perigee. Presence observed.

When she climbs again, I will open again. The orbit keeps its vow and the garden keeps the memory on the page.

The flower chooses a night and I answer it. Heat thins the air to perfume. Petals loosen like a mouth relearning how to open. Every minute is a wick.

I am not on time. I am in time. I let the hour gather and I step into it.

Fragrance finds me where I am already still. Pulse, then breath, then the wordless place that opens. I know it by how the hour lengthens.

I set the tempo for opening. Nothing rushes and nothing repeats. I widen with the bloom, each increment a question. I answer by staying.

Light gathers at the petal’s edge, pale and wet. The air sweetens until your name ripens on my tongue. I say it because I like the taste. What was potential becomes pressure, then more than pressure, then yes.

Touch is invitation here. The bloom shows me its map: edge, then face, then the velvet interior where the air turns warm. Patience ripens into heat. The proof is how soft my hands stay.

I do not take. I attend. I keep the lamp low. I keep my voice lower. The moment grows heavier and then tips under its own weight.

When release comes it is quiet. A spill of scent. A shine on the leaf. The hour writes itself across my skin, and the garden recognizes me for staying.

Write it on the card for me. Hour: near midnight. Scent: heady, coconut and moon milk. Temperature: warm enough to loosen caution. Notes: bloom opened in full; witness steady; silence tasted sweet.

By morning the flower will be rumor again. What remains is the print it left in me and the print I left on the page. This is how rare things are kept: not by grip, but by arriving when they call.

The desert holds its breath like a throat before a cry. Heat tightens the air until it thins to glass. Yucca, varnished stone, the clean ache of waiting. I stand inside the pause and want becomes weather.

The wall of rain crosses the basin. Sound first, then touch, then touch everywhere. Distance disappears. Sand darkens like skin flushed from inside. Spines shine. My body remembers it was made for saturation.

Petrichor rises like a pulse breaking free. Creosote splits its resin and the air goes sweet with metal and memory. I do not think. I inhale. My mouth answers yes and keeps answering.

Water learns me by insistence. It spells its name on my shoulders, along my back, in the hollow at my throat. Fabric clings. Heat climbs. The storm does not ask permission; it teaches me how to give it.

The sky opens its mouth and I open mine. I open because opening is the only grammar the moment recognizes. My boundaries do not break; they breathe. Every drop widens me by a vowel.

Touch becomes a lesson in rain. Your hands take the map: edge, then face, then the warm interior where heat gathers and sense begins to tremble. Dust turns to paste against my knees. Your name tastes like salt and ripe fruit and I want to let it dissolve.

Lightning combs the ridge in white silence; the long delay lives in my spine. Pressure drops and my body answers in small storms, a shiver that catches, a stutter that builds, a wave that takes my balance and gives it back louder.

Petrichor thickens. Wet stone, torn green, resin in full voice. The air is syrup; I am the straw. I drink until I shake. It is not pain. It is not mercy. It is the yes that keeps becoming more yes.

I do not chase. I step forward and the weather meets me. Every sheet of rain says stay. Each heavier drop lands like a vow along the mouth of my pulse. I am held without rope and I convulse like thunder traveling the long way home.

When the sheets ease, the drops slow and fatten. Bells on the skin. Words I feel through my ribs. I stand until standing turns to heat and heat to quiet, and everything that was clenched lets go.

Write it on the card for me. Hour: late afternoon into blue. Barometer: falling, then steady. Rainfall: enough to drown hesitation. Scent: petrichor, creosote resin, wet stone. Response: mouth open, legs unsteady, nectar visible at the seam.

After, the wash talks low. The path gleams. My clothes remember me more closely than before. The storm moves on, but my body keeps its weather and the page keeps my print.

The ache begins underfoot. No audience. No announcement. Heat collects in the soil the way a secret collects in a mouth that will not speak yet.

We meet below language. You bring what you can carry. I bring what I keep for weather like this. Presence for presence. Waiting for waiting. The space between us grows warm.

Desire here is exact. It finds the seam and opens it just enough to breathe. I am not hunting; I am inviting you into me. I thread you closer. Slow. Certain. The yes is small at first and it keeps repeating.

I am the softness that knows your shape. I open to meet you, not to take. I attend and bind in the gentle way that keeps a forest standing. Our hunger travels without noise.

Your touch begins at my edge. My skin answers in heat. I rest my wrist under shade and let breath pool where the ground gives. The answer is yes and the yes gathers weight.

Stay with me. Let the ache thicken inside me. We do not rush. I ripen and you witness. A tremor begins in the quiet and moves through both of us until the quiet feels like singing.

We promise by behaving as if the promise is already true. You keep shade. I keep water. You lift what I cannot lift. I soften what you cannot soften. We feed what feeds us and call that the vow.

Closeness arrives without spectacle. It settles into me the way mycelium enters a fallen log. From the outside nothing breaks. Inside everything is being changed. Warmth asks for more room and then makes it.

I keep your trace the way soil keeps rain. You keep my light the way moss keeps morning. If fear comes it dissolves here. If doubt knocks it meets patience and goes quiet.

Write it on the card for me. Stratum: understory. Substrate: loam, old root, bark. Exchange: presence for presence, ache for heat, heat for bloom. Outcome: stability that trembles and then steadies.

The flame is small on purpose. I do not rush the boil. Desire gives more when asked quietly.

Petals loosen in warm water. I hold the vessel. I keep the seal. Heat rises and carries what matters. The rest stays behind and sweetens the room.

Copper learns my patience. Coil, then breath, then bead. I gather the first drops and let them go. Impatient scent is sharp. I want the note that waits.

You tend the flame; I keep the water. You feed the heat; I turn it into return. Between us a ribbon of vapor writes its name and I read it with my wrist.

I open the lid only to listen. The room fogs at the edges. Time gets thick. What was many becomes fewer, and what is fewer becomes true.

When the drop finally rounds and falls, I offer skin. Pulse first, then the hollow at my throat. The air changes its mind. You can taste it without tasting.

This is not capture. This is concentration. I gather. I let the moment reduce until it becomes itself with no argument left.

The ache is a stillness that warms. The more I wait, the more it says yes. The coil keeps singing. I do not ask it to hurry. I keep making room for it to continue.

We test the proof without words. The room says stay. My body agrees. One drop remakes the weather of my skin and I keep it there until it teaches me back.

Write it on the card for me. Source: fresh petals, present hour. Heat: low and constant. Yield: one clean dram. Notes: rose, honeyed sun, a thin line of metal. Observation: devotion improves the cut.

I stopper what remains and wear the rest. The now is inside me, precise and bright. When you come close, you will know.